Fani’s Gift to Trump –

If Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis didn’t exist, Donald Trump would have had to invent her. 

Thanks to her bizarre RICO indictment of Trump for allegedly conspiring to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election, Willis has afforded him the opportunity to publish and monetize his history-making mugshot. That arrest photo of Trump scowling beneath the seal of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office is and will continue to be the gift that keeps on giving as it appears on billboards, yard signs, posters, bumper stickers, T-shirts, sweatshirts, caps, coffee mugs, the internet, and TV.

The subliminal message embedded in that stark image is alarming and powerful: “If they can do this to me, a former president of the United States and the leading political opponent of the regime in power, they can do it to you. Remember: They’re after you. I’m just in the way.”

In short, the Trump mugshot is a political favor of incalculable benefit. As an in-kind contribution to Trump’s upcoming 2024 campaign, it should be valued somewhere in the billion-dollar range.

https://t.co/MlIKklPSJT pic.twitter.com/Mcbf2xozsY

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2023

But the benighted Willis’ largesse doesn’t end there. Not only does her wide-ranging RICO indictment encompass the 2020 election in Georgia, but it also cites the defendants’ efforts to challenge the conduct of the elections in swing states across America.

Why Willis would want to complicate her case in this manner is beyond me, but she did. She’s put together a case with 19 defendants, a platoon of unindicted co-conspirators and a fact pattern that spans the United States. If this convoluted monstrosity ever makes it past pre-trial motions, where does Willis plan to try the case — the Georgia Dome? And how many years will it take? (RELATED: Fani, Justice Is Not a Blind Lady)

But I digress. The real point here is that, thanks to Willis and her team of Rhodes Scholars, for the first time ever, Trump and his colleagues will have a court proceeding wherein they can spell out in excruciating detail and with ample evidence why they challenged the 2020 election. Such evidence will be relevant to establishing a reasonable doubt as to their alleged criminal intent. 

Put another way, Willis must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump and his alleged conspirators believed that he had lost the election and nevertheless corruptly acted to steal it.

This opens the door through which the defense will be able to drive pallet-loads of evidence demonstrating how the electoral outcome in the so-called swing states was affected and effectively determined by ballot harvesting, the counting of unverified and unverifiable mail in ballots as well as the thousands of such ballots that appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the night in Democrat-controlled counties. 

And then there will be evidence of the mysterious late-night suspension of vote counting in Willis’ very own Fulton County due to a water main break and the inexplicable nearly simultaneous suspension of tabulating in the Democrat-controlled Wayne County, Michigan. Suspicious? Coincidence? If this mess of an indictment ever goes to trial, a jury will get to consider that as well as all of the other skullduggery that undermined the integrity of the 2020 election. (READ MORE: House Judiciary Probes Corrupt Georgia Prosecutor Fani Willis)

As for the jury, it will be drawn from throughout Fulton County, which encompasses more than deep-blue Atlanta. Unlike Manhattan and the District of Columbia, Trump and his co-defendants will not be dead on arrival at the courthouse. There are communities outside Atlanta where Trump held his own. 

And if — as it should — Willis’ RICO case gets removed to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, the jury pool will expand to include rural counties where Trump won handily. 

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Right now, we should pause and give thanks for Fani Willis. At the very least, Trump 2024 owes her a free MAGA hat, an all-expenses paid weekend at Mar-A-Lago, and an autographed Trump mugshot yard sign. 

After all, she is living proof of the societal good that dedicated and not very bright people with law degrees can accomplish.

George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor. He blogs at knowledgeisgood.net.